{"id":2934,"date":"2020-04-13T20:13:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T20:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/?p=2934"},"modified":"2020-04-16T19:56:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:56:23","slug":"many-pieces-that-look-beyond-repair-can-be-saved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/?p=2934","title":{"rendered":"MANY PIECES THAT LOOK BEYOND REPAIR CAN BE SAVED!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Before_Wrestlers\"<\/a>\"After_Wrestlers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Group of Two Wrestlers, c. 1680<\/p>\n

Japanese Porcelain<\/p>\n

H: 12 \u00bd inches<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

An employee of one of the major auction houses, accidentally dropped the above pair of wrestlers which shattered into 31 pieces. Fortunately, they called me immediately. Telling them to leave it in place on the floor, I collected it from there to be certain we had every shard. The accident happened after the sale catalogue had been distributed which included a photograph of the pair being offered at\u00a0 auction.<\/p>\n

This is one of the world\u2019s most important pieces of Japanese porcelain. China first developed porcelain during the T\u2019ang Dynasty (618-907 CE); the Japanese could not duplicate it until they found Kaolin, the foundation for porcelain. \u00a0They first made it in the Arita region of Japan during the 1610\u2019s.\u00a0 Known as Imari ware after the port from which the pieces were exported to other areas.<\/p>\n

There are only four known examples of boys wrestling which relate to this pair:\u00a0 one in The Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, collection; another example listed in the Toto Bunka Shuppan Company\u2019s, Nihon no Toki<\/em> No. 245; another example sold through Sotheby\u2019s London in June 1990; and \u201cChina boyes [sic] wrestling\u201d listed in the 1688 inventory of Burghley House, Devonshire, England, which is still there.\u00a0\u00a0 In the 1980\u2019s Lady Victoria, descendant of the Cecils of Burghley who purchased the wrestlers in the 17th<\/sup> century, discovered that the door stop that had been used for many, many years was actually this fine porcelain!<\/p>\n

Before the pair was broken, it was estimated in the sale catalogue for $30,000 to $50,000. The price I originally quoted the client for the complex restoration was the same amount that the auction house thought the piece would bring in the restored condition; $10,000.\u00a0 So that was too much to restore it.\u00a0 I agreed to a price much, much lower, less than half,\u00a0 plus 15% above whatever it brought at auction in excess of $12,000; it realized $135,000 ($240,000 today), four and a half times above the low estimate in good condition. \u00a0The owners came to me with long faces saying they owed me a lot of money \u2013 a lot more than the original $10,000. I told them that I had made them a lot of money, but as a gesture of good will, I would stick to my original estimate and simply ask for the balance of it, since in actuality the restoration cost would have been $10,200. \u00a0We left friends and have worked together ever since.<\/p>\n

When your humpty-dumpty falls calls us to put it back together again!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Group of Two Wrestlers, c. 1680 Japanese Porcelain H: 12 \u00bd inches \u00a0 An employee of one of the major auction houses, accidentally dropped the above pair of wrestlers which shattered into 31 pieces. Fortunately, they called me immediately. Telling them to leave it in place on the floor, I collected it from there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.art-conservation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}